I'm moving to Canada to work for Big Fish Games

Read all about it:

http://greyaliengames.com/blog/im-moving-to-canada-to-work-for-big-fish-games/

Good luck in Canada, Vancouver is a nice city and Canada is a beautiful country. I was in Canada Dec-Jan and it was cold but great, selling up and moving out is a big transition, I hope it works out.

Darkheart

Sausages.

Wishing you all the best of luck with visa and moving. Sounds like a great opportunity.

Thanks all! I'm gonna learn to ski.

I presume this is a positive statement :-)

Waffles!

So did the VISA thing fork out? What it if doesn't does it mean you will have to stay in england? anyways, very cool for you, wish you all the best :)

If you see Celine Dion, Bryan Adams or Shania Twain can you punch them please, there's really no valid excuse for what they do. Thanks.

Vancouver, eh?



Hope they're paying you well!

Nice work - you've certainly come a long way since Iron Fist. :o)

Do you get to keep working with BlitzMax, or do you now need to learn something <ahem> "real"?

Swift when is your game out? a talented programmer like you should have had atleast 2 polished finished games by now. Come on swift :) I want to read about you getting offer like grey alien

Congratulations!
Good luck with it :)

I'm no expert in these matters, but I think it takes more than two hours for a visa to be approved. ;op

Congratulations and good luck.

I learnt to ski in me teens...Hated it. ;o)

Well done Jake - you deserve it!

Congratulations mate. That's quite a big step you're taking...

Nice work, good luck!

I hear Visas are a hyper-galactic pain in the astro-sphincter for Canada.


I know of one company that's all but given up getting some artists over from England... it was taking forever. Why so hard? I dunno.

Good luck either ways.

Maximo:
If I wanted to work for a game company instead of for myself, I could get a job doing do, no problem. :-) I have had jobs in the game industry before, ya know!




I get offers for those in the mail all the time which tell me I am preapproved and I can apply online in 30 seconds.

Once again, thanks all for your good wishes.

Well if it didn't work out, we might go and stay there for a long working holiday anyway, plus we'd go to other places in Europe and do the same. We feel like a change so we'll do it anyway.

Indeed. Naturally I projected my income minus tax against living costs over there and it works out fine. It does seem to be a great city and everyone who knows it says good things about it, so I'll get to see what all the hype is about.

Yep :-) We've all got to start somewhere. I aborted that game and made it a mission to finish something commercial, which panned out luckily (with Indiepath's help).

You bet I get to keep on working with BMax! My framework is very well established now and I'll be using that to make more games. Other people will be using other languages and I'll be assisting them with game design which will be good fun. Who knows what the future holds, I may change to something else, or even to another platform or I might move more into design and away from the actual programming. A designer who used to be a programmer is able to come up with feasible designs and talk to programmers in their own terms.

Not compared to the US. They get too many applicants in the US and the extra ones are subjected to a lottery system so that even really skilled people can't get in. That's why many tech companies including Microsoft and EA are opening studios in Canada because Canada will let in qualified or experienced people (if those people can't be found locally).

I was under the impression that visas between commonwealth countries were slightly easier to obtain. It's quite possible that I just imagined that though. ;o)

It's MUCH easier to get in if you have a degree, if not you have to have YEARS of experience. 3 years for each year of a degree + some more. So like 10+ easily.

Hey! Congrats... hope it turns out great...

I can't even remember when I learned to ski.. was probably 5 or something.. snowboarding is cooler.. ;)

so is Big Fish:Vancouver going to be the first BlitzMax run game studio?

Great. Got any jobs going?

Figures. I pay for your framework and now you probably won't be able to sell any of your code in the future. I'm sure BFG will sign your brain from here on out. :) lol..

Rare to see a successful indie dev make the move back to a "real job". You'll lose some flexability but like you said, working for perhaps the largest casual game company has it's advantages. :) :) :) An offer you couldn't refuse I'm sure.

You made the right choice in working in 2 year chunks. Alot will happen to the industry in the next couple of years and you want to keep your long term options open.

Major congrats! I've only known you for a year, but it's been a very impressive year! :)

Well as I said, I'm going to be using it but others probably won't be.

They can only hire a certain amount of people from outside Canada to make sure that the locals aren't shafted. You can always apply to BFG for a job (they have details on their website) and show them your previous titles, but you'd have to move to the US and Canada of course.

MGE: thanks. Yes this move will affect the framework a bit, more on that at a future date, but I've ensured that I will still be able to support my existing customers, plus I'll make sure that I do a release before I start work there. Yeah it's weird going from Indie back to employement, but as I've been contracting for over a year, in a sense I wasn't totally Indie anyway. I just like making games, and I also like running my own business, but I'm willing to sacrifice my business for a while in order to keep making games with the biggest company in the industry just for the experience. I'll be at the forefront of the casual industry as it changes, and my job will be to keep abreast of what is happening and capitalise on it. Of course I may end up staying at BFG and that is what they want, and if it's good there, why not? If I don't stay after 2 years then at least I'll be bang up to date with what's going on.

Grey:

Wish you best success for the games and the job, you're pretty talented and productive. it sould be very exciting to work in the top casual gaming company.

Welcome to Canuckistan! :D If you ever come near Montreal, ping me ;P

Thanks Yoko.

Gosse, well we will be exploring Canada and the US, so we'll see where we end up...

I just realised that I should say *THANKS* to many people who've helped get me where I am today:

Firstly I should thank Helen, my partner, for letting me follow my dream of making games for a living. I also thank my Aikido Sensei and the boss of the business software firm I worked for because I learnt lots about positive thinking through them, as I did from my good friends Kit and Aranya.

I should also thank Mark and Skidracer (and others at BRL) for Blitz of course (it rocks!), and for these forums which were vital to my success.

I need to thank the MANY forum members who helped me out with code problems over the years. Your help was invaluable. Particular thanks go out to those who allowed me to use their code in my framework - stalwarts such as Brucey come to mind.

I'd like to thank my framework customers for their support and send particular thanks to those who helped me to improve the framework and fix bugs. You know who you are.

Thanks go to Indiepath for being my first publisher! For giving me loads of advice and having faith in my first commercial game.

Thanks to Gabriel for his excellent shareware submission service which I made of when I self-published.

Thanks to the people on this forum I've worked with on games such as Quicksilva, Cygnus, IPete2 and CS_TBL (you are all top people!).

And lastly thanks to everyone who's given me positive encouragement through these forums over the years, and thanks to those of you who bought my games of course! :-)

Thanks everyone. I'm not going away from the forums through, just the UK, so I'll still be posting (but maybe not in working hours ;-))

If I missed you out, I'm sorry but thanks anyway!

Congratulations Jake :) - and, erm, nice oscar speech :p

lol, well I was just trying to be polite and show my genuine appreciation.

Seriously - what are they like to work for?

I ask because as you know I've been left with a bitter after-taste from previous experiences.

This country is turning into a bumhole. I'd jump at the chance to get out before Gordon Brown destroys what little there is left.

Congratulations, Jake, I'm sure you'll love it out there.

@ puki...

Walls !

@GfK: They are all nice people and professional, they care about what they do and they have a positive attitude (which I'm all for) and they pay well. Deadlines do exist though of course, and you have to crunch when the deadline nears (although they don't want people to be working stupid hours all the way through the project like the culture at some AAA game studios), and you will have to cut some features in order to launch the game etc. But that's kinda normal even for Indies especially if you want to regularly release games and make some money. They are into hiring people with a positive attitude who get results, so this is often experienced individuals who have already run their own business rather than fresh-faced graduates. Basically you have to walk the talk.

@Gabriel: Thanks. Within the bounds of my contract, I'll report back what it's like working there. I can say what I like about Vancouver and Canada of course. By the way, I liked Seattle too (where BFG are based), it's neat there and the big office with 300 people in it seemed like a real blast!

Congratulations, and add another sausage to the pile.

The problem with all these well meant sausages is that I'm vegetarian, so perhaps Linda McCartney ones are the way to go for me instead of Walls...btw, Vancouver and Seattle are great for Veggies and Vegans + people who like Asian food (I do).

Congratulations Jake! That's awesome news ;)

Looks like your assault on the casual games market for the past few years worked out brilliantly for you. Keep us posted.

Interesting info - ta.
Didn't do Linda McCartney much good.

An interesting development, pun intended. Good for you Jake.

well I offered you waffles but you did not respond!

btw I think you forgot one very important person in your Oscar nomination speach that you gave earlier today, well you forgot to mention Puki!!!

Thanks. Well I did have a plan to build up and do really well in this arena, and it's panning out (still plenty more to do), so I will keep everyone posted. I think it's important for people to have visions and long term goals to aim towards. It works for me anyway. Plus I burnt my bridges so I had to succeed.

Well he's made me laugh a few times, but that's about it. ;-) We've never traded 3D textures/models...

Good luck Grey, I live a bit north of Seattle, and have been to Vancouver, Canada more times than I can count.

You'll have to work on your acent, Eh?

Just wanted to wish you good luck Jake. It was great fun and an honour working with you on Easter Bonus. You`ve been a real inspiration to me and to many other people here on the forum. One day you`ll get to play one of my games, I promise :)

Stay in touch friend.

All the best,
Jason.

I wish you all the very best Jake, you're one of the true talents of this community and you deserve a ton of success. I hope you and Helen are very happy in Canada. :)

Congrats and good luck!

I'm sure it'll work out brilliantly for you :)

Wow thanks for all the kinds words and wishes dudes!

Nah, I'll stick to being properly English. People over there think I sound posh (or so I was told), but it's just that I don't have a local accent - I'm not posh (although one day I'll settle for rich ;-))

Well I'll hold you to that then, and furthermore I look forward to it!

Wish you all the best!
Well done! :)

DUDE! What the F***?

Tracy's bro JUST moved over there- YESTERDAY.

Well, i'm glad I got to meet you before you bugger off. Good luck mate! Have fun!

Congratulations... Best of luck with the move.

You wouldn't believe what being around other acents does to your own without knowing it.

I have a friend that was from London and he moved to Alabama, USA, and he lost most of his British acent and now he has a strong country acent with a little British still in it, its quite strange. :)

Thanks all.

Yeah Cygnus it's pretty crazy! There's another UK indie meetup in October in Woking that I'm going to (if I'm still in the UK then).

Yeah, it's worse for kids. Once I stayed at my grandad's in somerset for a couple of weeks and came back practically saying "Ar, 'e's a biggun'" etc. And also I made friends with this German kid on a campsite once and started talking in a German/English accent to my family. In fact when I was at BFG, one of the Personal staff members who was showing us around told us that she was originally from the midlands, but you'd have never guessed it as she sounded totally American. So anyway, we'll see what happens to me...(and my kids)

Congrats Grey Alien!

Thats so AWESOME!

Wish you luck with your new job!

The Mighty WERDNA(Lord Of Darkness)

I was talking to G/F about emigrating a few months back. Gordon Brown had annoyed me again - I forget how, so I mentioned emigrating. I don't think she took it seriously so I kind of changed the subject.

Mentioned it again today, and that really set the cat among the pigeons when she asked me if I got the chance would I go without her. Not so much my answer of "no I'd stay here" that annoyed her. Rather, the 6-second pause before I came up with it. :/

Congrats and best of luck Grey :)

You should be proud of yourself. You are doing what you like and providing for the most important thing in your life: your family.

With the mindset you portray, this won't be a problem for you, but I will mention it anyway. Now that you are back to working directly for a company, don't forget to make time for the family, even moreso after a major relocation like this.

Best wishes to you and your family. FWIW, you have the respect and admiration of many here.

GfK...



LOL... I was waiting for somebody to come out with something like that. Someone had to.

Gook luck.
:D

That's pretty cool. To think that BMax has now got you moving to Canada, well BFG and your obvious talent and dedication too. Hope it works out well.

> The job

Will you still have time to update your framework?

> Lots to organise

You could pile your stuff into one room and get a lock on the door.

Sweet :). So many people back home are emigrating these days. One of my cousins moved to Vancouver a few months back. A couple of mates are in Aussie land, and another in NZ. Seems like everyone is leaving... Soon there won't be anyone decent left heh.

heh, almost 500,000 brits leave the UK a year now. Pretty crazy, Wondered how come there were so many of us here.

Well Grey, I guess this makes us neighbours! (Almost. I'm in Ladner, across the tunnel a little way away).

Good luck!

Hello.

Wow! Congratulations Jake, that's really excellent news. Hope you'll all be happy there.

Later,

Jes

Congrats Grey and good luck.

Well done GA!

Thanks everyone!

Why do they do that? I mean ask questions that they know they won't like the answer to :-)

Absolutely. I'm going to make sure I get home on time each day (maybe take short lunch breaks) so I can see them and also have dark good weekends and holidays.

Well before I go I'll do a proper update then after that things will be changing but I'll post more info on the framework forum when I know more.

Actually we will do something similar: put it in our big loft and lock that. Nothing valuable, just personal stuff that it's not worth shipping.

So it does! I'll be about 15 miles away, hopefully in the Kitsilano/Point Grey area.

Congrats on your decision Jake! I'm sure it will work out for you. BFG team looks like a great people to work with. Don't forget about us 'little devs' ;-)

So there is more well known BlitzMax devs? Good to hear that. Maybe they'll start to treat us with respect :D

cheers
Roman

I think there are some well known BMax developers that hang out here (and some that don't post that often) but they are less known in the wider Indie/Casual field. Hopefully I'll make some smash hit games at BFG that will bolster BMax's reputation. I talk about BMax to all the developers I meet. Some are surprised that it can make a game like Fairway, but I say, it's just a collection of C++ libraries with a BASIC-like interface, so it's fast and flexible because it's compiled not interpreted and it's very quick to develop stuff in, which is why I use it - I can focus on the game design rather than the technical stuff as it's all been done for me.

Best of luck!

Congrats GA! It's been interesting to see your games grow over these several years and finally working for a large Casual games company, all using Blitzmax! Good luck in Canada!

GA,

Congratulations!! I hope you do wonders there.

Jason

You've given me some new hope for getting out of my boring office job and into programming games (in an office). I'm 28 and keep thinking I'm too old, but I know you're a couple of years older than me so I think there's hope yet. Just need buckets of time and effort and it could happen.

OMG! I can't believe I missed this - CONGRATULATIONS MY FRIEND!

All the best to you and the family and keep up the great work!

IPete2.

Canada sure looks beautiful ..

http://images.google.co.uk/images?gbv=2&hl=en&safe=off&q=canada+mountain&btnG=Search+Images


> This country is turning into a bumhole. I'd jump at the chance to get out before Gordon Brown destroys what little there is left

Agreed. Except the country turned horrible long ago. I spend most of my time in Czech Republic and certainly notice the difference. Beautiful girls and cheap beer (~70p a pint) for starters! Move back to Britain you say? No thanks. To me it's the dumping ground of Europe

Good luck in Canada Jake

Congrats Jake and all the very breast for your move! Canada's fuel used to be a third of the price of the good ole U of K. Something less to budget for!

Glad for you, kinda fancied the emigration thing maself... all in good time maybe?

Thanks again for your excellent framework (;-)

No prizes for guessing which sort of website you just came here from... o.O

Ho ho, can't afford to do THAT sorta thing, it's just a comical slant on the not so original very best... blah. (;->

Congrats, hope all goes well.

john

I hear that. I'm down in Windsor, ON, next to Detroit *shudders*. Don't feel too sorry for yourself =P People aren't shooting other people here, they're shooting theirselves it sucks so bad. lol.

I have only heard good things about Vancouver though. Can't judge a country by a few pussy boils in it.

Awesome Grey!! Sorry if this was asked somewhere up above, but are you going to continue using BlitzMax at BFG or are you moving on to another language?

Congrats!!

congrats! nice job you deserve it. here's a zucchini.

2 things... screw skiing.... snowboarding, that's where it's at.

make sure you keep ownership of your framework especially if they are going to have other devs use it. unless of course they buy you out...

good luck dude, except for the gloom that area is awesome. god, I miss mountains.

Snowboarding is awsome.

I enjoy water sports more though, (jet ski-ing, wake boarding, ect.)

GA, are they going to let you continue using BlitzMax or will they make you switch to a C variant?

Once again, many thanks all! :-)

Yeah I'm 33, so you've got hope for sure! I didn't even start Grey Alien Games until I was 30 (although I was using BlitzPlus for a year before that getting practice + I've been programming mini-game since I was 8).

Thanks Peter!

Yep. It's beautiful here too, but we will really enjoy going out and about in Canada with the kids.

I think it's about half price now, but they all have bigger cars. I'll sell my Scooby over here and get something sensible over there with a big boot for trips. One day I hope to get an electric car anyway.

Yeah I'm gonna continue! The like what I've done so far with it and my framework so are happy for me to keep on using it, which is cool as transferring to C++ would be a bit of pain, I know it but not well enough + I'd need to make a framework again etc. Basically I can deliver the goods in BMax (already proved that) and it's speedy to make games in so why bother to swap to something else because it's more "standard", they don't care about the language, they just want results.

Yeah I used to skateboard so I'm intro trying out snowboarding for sure.

;-) I've got this one under control...

Kinda late to the party, but: congrats man! It's been really cool watching your projects from Holiday Bonus and onwards. Fairway Solitaire was a very interesting game, so I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with o'er in Canada. :)

Well done man, you deserve.

Thanks

@Karja: Well my next game is well made and good fun but many will say it's not original (although the theme is) + we have a few tricks up out sleeves. But yeah in Canada it will get really interesting as we have some great game ideas to break the mould (always a bit risky) and some other ideas based on improving an existing mould in a big way. So I'm not sure which we'll be making yet...

Does this mean that we`ll never get to see that platformer from you? Hopefully you can still make some smaller games in your spare time.

If you still have any spare time that is ;)

Jason.

Thumbs up
Good luck

Man I so wished I had the time to make that with you plus also I was going to team up with a guy from Reflexive to do one. Unfortunately there's a thing in the BFG contract (which loads of firms have) that says if I make a game in my spare time, they own it! True. I said, what if it's just a little free game, can I post it on a forum if it's free and they said I'd have to ask permission, but probably. So I could make a free platformer, but not a commercial one otherwise I violate the non-competition clause in my contract. Unless they publish the commercial one of course.

Hey Grey good luck in Canada.

I hear a lot about that "we own everything you make in your spare time"-line in US and CA contracts. I'm glad something like that isn't in my contract :-). In the Netherlands we don't usually do that kind of stuff.

Isn't that illegal to say a company owns everything a worker does in their spare time?
It would mean they own his children too, and human trade is for sure illegal!
And if they own what their workers do in free time, they should also pay for it.
At least my freetime is about 10 times higher priced than my work time, so I would get a nice bonus salary.

It's only everything related to what the company does e.g. GAMES. Not music or graphics, or kids or food or whatever. The idea is that you might use company knowledge (or source code libraries) or whatever to make the game, plus you could go into competition selling it. Also they want you focused on their job and not some other job in the evenings. Years ago someone tried to get me to sign one of these in the UK and I said no, take it out, then in my spare time I made some other business software (not related to the company) and made some money from it.

I think the idea is to protect the company from unscrupulous employees using what they learned at the company to profit on the side, er as Grey just said. :)

All my contracts for full time employment were this way. Often the best you can do is negotiate on the time after which on leaving you are allowed to work on similar projects to the one you last worked on whilst in their employ.

Urgh! Never concede any such thing -- unless they intend to pay you to sit on the beach all day, of course. :)

So...are they going to let you keep using BlitzMax? And you'll be working alongside other programmers that are using C. Does that concern you any?

Yeah I did that too. The interesting thing is you can work on a project but just not RELEASE it during the post contractual non-competition period.

I already answered this (more than once), not specifically your question, but the same one from someone else ;-) The answer is YES.

(C++). No, should it? I'll be in charge of them anyway because I'm the Lead Programmer/Designer. I understand C++ and OOP, but I won't need to look at their code to manage them and make their games better. It's like a while ago when I was in business software, I designed an online shopping system for the British government (http://www.bookshop.parliament.uk/) and then I managed another employee to make it in Perl even though I only knew HTML.

@Chroma: How many programmers do you need to develop HO game? Or click-management? One efficient is good enough.

cheers
Roman

Not specifically HO games - one decent programmer can make any game, given enough commitment.

Congratulations! I hear Vancouver is a beautiful area and a huge center of "multimedia" (I believe most television shows and a lot of movies produced here in the states are filmed up there)

If you're ever venture southward to Arizona, you'll have to stop by and say 'ello :)


Or... considering the political climate and our *cough* choices for next president, I might end up down the street from ya :)

Sure one is fine, but the point of having other designers in the office is that ideas can be discussed and improved as a team effort and this makes the resulting game better.

@RocketGnome: Yeah I keep seeing TV programs being made there like Supernatural for example. We would like to venture South and explore the US for sure, it's an amazingly diverse country.

Gey Alien
May I ask you how many people are working for Big Fish Games ?
Do they produce casual games only ?
Thanks and and good luck for your future job

@Alberto: I know they have 300 employees, but many of those are support staff. They also have download game developers, artists, designers, web-game developers, technical people who manage the website, game ops who launch games on the site, localisation experts, QA testers, accountants, human resources staff, marketing etc. There's more, the list is pretty big but normal for a reasonable sized company. Only a small part of the company makes casual games. They do also make online games, but they are casual too.

>Only a small part of the company makes casual games

So most of their games are bought from random indies & companies?

I just got back from Toronto.. I want to go back. :(
Congrats Grey :)

>I know they have 300 employees...

Wow, I supposed 20 or 30 people, max
They should have a turnover of milions dollars,then
It the casual game market so big ?
Is BFG the greatest company in thie field ?

They are a portal so they mostly sell other people's games and take a cut. Simple business model. But they also publish some peoples games (not the same as just selling them as they spend more time making the game better and send it to other portals too), buy the IP for some games and call them their games, make their own games (this is what I do for them). Plus the have an online community site with lots of Java games that are very popular. Also they sell some games in retail boxes and have other games coming out on DS soon. Oh and they probably make some ad revenue on their community site, but I wouldn't imagine it's much.

Alberto: Yeah millions of dollars, was $30m a few years back, it's more now. Of course the casual market is big :-) BFG has the biggest sales for a single site. Someone like Real may be bigger in total but is made of SEVERAL sites, like GameHouse, Real and more etc.

I believe that "sausages" refers to applause. The expression was used many times on a mid 50's-and-60's BBC radio program called The Goon Show. One of my ALL-TIME FAVORITE comedies, incidentally.

Anyway, congratulations Grey!

Thanks Adam. I never knew about that sausages thing...I do know that Punch from Punch and Judy says is.

...and dogs on That's Life.

Oh yeah mustn't forget them.

I'm happy for you grey, good luck and Godspeed !

Hey look:

http://www.casualgaming.biz/news/27836/Big-Fish-opens-Vancouver-studio

Yeah I saw that too. I'm the first designer/developer and my task is to help grow the studio.

Vancouver.. Isn't that the place Ubisoft made Assassins Creed? or maybe it was Montreal..